Hey Reader

You know those tasks that aren't really that difficult, but they feel oddly hard to make ourselves start?

Or those things that will realistically take 5 minutes, but they've been sitting on our "to do" list for 2 weeks...or more...👀

Yeahhhh 😅

I've come to notice that a lot of the time, the thing that holds me back isn't so much my ability to do the task.

It's also not a lack of wanting the thing done.

It's boredom. Some tasks are just painfully dull and Rebel Brain™️ is trying to protect me from them.

Thanks, Rebel Brain™️ 🤦‍♀️

While it'd be great to be more disciplined and "just do it", to be the kind of person who could just tell themselves to get something done and take action, a lot of the time that's not my reality 😝

To tackle this, I'm playing around with gamification and looking at how it can calm Rebel Brain™️ down a bit.

Let's have a look!

The idea - Gamify your work

As much as I appreciate Rebel Brain™️ for trying to keep me safe from boredom, some of the things we have to do are just going to be uninteresting.

Rather than hoping I magically wake up one day being the person who loves folding laundry, or organising my digital files, why not lean into something I already love.

Games 😈

The long-story-short of gamification is bringing game elements to things that aren't typically game-like.

These can be point scoring systems, leader boards, achievements, or other aspects that make games fun (and addictive 😂)

The biggest plus I find from gamification is novelty.

Rebel Brain™️ likes the excitement of things that feel fresh and new, and gamification can be a great way to make the mundane more interesting.

There are plenty of ways to bring more fun to our work through gamification; it really just depends on the type of tasks we're doing and what game aspect is going to work best for those and us.

Some examples include:

• Speed runs: seeing how much of a task or how many of something we can do in a specific amount of time
• Point systems: giving each task a point value and seeing how many points we can accumulate
• Level clearing: sequencing your task list and breaking it into levels to get through
• Reward systems: assigning prizes to having completed specific things or amounts of things
• High scores: how many of something or how long of something can we do in one session
• Streaks: how many days in a row we make sure something gets done

Currently I'm using that last one to keep me going with my exercise goal. I'm up to 319 days in a row now!

The most important part to watch out for though is making sure that setting up the gamification style doesn't hold us back from actually getting things done.

I love designing systems for myself, but there's always a risk of using the setup stage as a way to procrastinate on the work I actually have to do.

Stay vigilant!

Even more excitingly though...

Gamification doesn't just have to apply to our work. We can also bring it into our leisure time for a bit of novelty too.

If one your pastimes was reading, or if you're trying to develop a reading habit, then I'd love to invite you to our May reading challenge 🥳

This one is called the Goober Readathon and the idea is that with the reads we complete in May, we'll be helping our mascot Ghostie Goober learn how to cook 👻

(Don't worry, I'm not going to make you read cookbooks...unless you want to 😛)

Ghostie Goober has made their culinary study plan (i.e. a list of reading prompts) and we're going to help them tackle it.

For all the details on this cosy reading challenge, jump over to the intro video!

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Hope to have you on board!

Let's take action

When you feel yourself dragging your feet on getting stuff done because the tasks are just dull, try adding some novelty through gamification.

It could be a "race the clock" approach, or turning your household chores list into a bingo board.

Got other gamification ideas? I'd love to hear them! Hit reply and let me know 😄

Until next time!

- Jess